22 Transactions Tennessee Academy of Science 



On the Cumberland he did not content himself with beginning where 

 pearls were then being found. Neither did he content himself with 

 beginning at the head of navigation as the most determined Ameri- 

 cans would have done. Dressed in a uniform of serviceable khaki, 

 at a time when khaki was unknown in this country, he started 

 from up in the feud country of the Pine Mountains of Kentucky, 

 where the Cumberland was about the size of a large spring branch. 

 He walked down it to the falls in Whitley County; there built a 

 rough plank canoe and continued down to the mouth of the Cumber- 

 land near Paducah, something near a thousand-mile exploration trip. 

 Boeple came to see me at Carthage. He told me that he had found 

 eighty different species of mussels in Cumberland River, and that 

 there was a fortune in working up the shells into pearl buttons. He 

 urged me to go in with him and start a button factory. No ! Not I ! 

 I was too smart to be drawn into the iridescent meshes of a dreamer ! 

 He went on to Muscatine, Iowa. Finally, finding he could get no 

 one to go in with him and furnish the needed capital he began mak- 

 ing buttons out of mussel shells in a little tumbledown shanty in 

 Muscatine. They laughed at him but watched him. Boeple failed 

 because of lack of money. One of the shrewd business men of 

 Muscatine saw the possibilities and established a factory that made 

 him a fortune. Soon prosperous factories sprang up in many places. 

 Boeple remained poor. But, when he died, Iowa erected a splendid 

 monument in his memory. 



The Origin of the Pearl. 



The cause or origin of the pearl is always a question of great in- 

 terest. The great majority of pearls have been caused, either bv 

 some irritating substance like a grain of sand getting imbedded in 

 the mussel and becoming a source of irritation, or by the egg of a 

 small j)arasite, which preys upon mussels, becoming a source of 

 irrilalioii. In either case, nature gives the mussel the automatic 

 power to secrete this smooth pearl v substance around the irritating 

 object and thus reduce the trouble. The vast majority of pearls are 

 caused by the egg of the parasite. 



Japanese Culture Pearls. 



Tlic Japanese ieanied this secret oi [lie oiigiii ol the peail many 

 hundreds of years ago. They have ingeniously taken advantage of 

 it to cause the formation of immense quantities of "culture pearls", 



